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The Feeling of Exclusion
On the messy work of including each other and the right to feel connected
Did you ever see something going on and think, “Damn, I wish I were part of that”? Maybe it was a party, maybe it was a person, maybe it was a certain kind of power. For me, it’s been all of those. That woodsy guy with no attachments who wild camps on mountaintops without any sense of fear. That community where everyone seems to love and support each other, where life is always full of spontaneous art and music and every quotidian moment looks so worthy of remembering. Maybe for you, it’s a friend, it’s your ex, it’s your sibling who never felt the world weigh quite as heavy as you do. Maybe it’s someone with more power in the world than you have, someone with more love, more charisma, more anything.
I want to talk about privilege, and about envy and entitlement and empathy, and I want to say now that this is not the easiest thing to talk about. Not for anyone. This is a topic that’s far more complex and personal than many of our cultural narratives tend to make it, but at the same time, is straightforward and political in ways that may make us uncomfortable. I invite you to walk with me into exploring this, knowing there’s no way we’ll get to address every piece of it, no way to ensure we can really empathize with each other, but an awareness that there…
